[...] Although that time was long gone, they'd never formally acknowledged its passing--so much remained unspoken behind the glare on Tom's glasses--and Leila couldn't help feeling hurt that he'd unilaterally acknowledged it by inviting the girl to live with him.
[...] Charles' big book had been published just the week before and was getting slaughtered by reviewers ("bloated and immensely disagreeable" Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) [...]
When Charles's several honeymoons had ended, he settled down to write the big book, the novel that would secure him his place in the modern American canon. Once upon a time, it had sufficed to write The Sound and the Fury or The Sun Also Rises. But now bigness was essential. Thickness, length…
She went to conferences with him and performed what she was too slow to realize was her function at them: to be younger and fresh and somewhat exotic, to excite the envy of male writers who hadn't traded in their wives yet or hadn't done so recently.
Kaczynski had been barred from serving as his own counsel at his trial, effectively muzzled from airing his radical opinions about the U.S. government, by reason of insanity. And the proof of his insanity? His belief that the U.S. government was a repressive conspiracy that muzzled radical opinion.
